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1 " One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience. "
― Alice James
2 " If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich... "
3 " The fact is, I have been dead so long and it has been simply such a grim shoving of the hours behind me…since the hideous summer of ’78, when I went down to the deep sea, its dark waters closed over me and I knew neither hope nor peace. "
― Alice James , The Diary of Alice James
4 " In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho’ I was not conscious of the necessity until ’67 or ’68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay prostrate after the storm with my mind luminous and active and susceptible of the clearest, strongest impressions, I saw so distinctly that it was a fight simply between my body and my will, a battle in which the former was to be triumphant to the end....So, with the rest, you abandon the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and refuse to keep them sane when you find in turn one moral impression after another producing despair in the one, terror in the others, anxiety in the third and so on until life becomes one long flight from remote suggestion and complicated eluding of the multifold traps set for your undoing. "
5 " Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge? "
6 " What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading. "
― Alice James ,
7 " Original sin is my only refuge, I was born bad and I never have recovered "
8 " It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose! "
9 " I was born bad and I never have recovered. "
10 " Truly nothing is to be expected except for the unexpected. "
― Alice James , Her Life in Letters
11 " Sargy always had the capacities of a cormorant, so he is able to swallow her whole, not having to think about her as she is going down must make it easier "
12 " The paralytic on his couch can have if he wants them wider experiences than Stanley slaughtering the savages, the two roomed cottage may enclose an infinitely richer, sweeter domestic harmony than the palace; and the peaceful cotton-spinner win victories beside which those of the reverberating general are dust and ashes -- let us not waster the sacred fire and wear away the tissues in the vulgar pursuit of what others have and we have not; admitting defeat isn't the way to conquer and from every failure imperishable experience survives "
13 " Imagine the martyrdom of a pun which has become an integral portion of one's organism to be lugged through life like the convict's ball and chain. Do you suppose he vainly tries to escape it, or is he passive in its clutches or can it be possible that some memory of the joy still survives which irradiated his being, the first time he heard it from his lips in the springtime of his practice? "
14 " How many nights and sunrises came to caress our hearts. Then, as often happens, I see I'm just lonely in living the poetry of these moments, and I'm throwing away my magic. I can find refuge in my songs, they surround me like a mother, but then I realize that this hug is becoming a cage, I'm prisoner in my dreams, and I wonder: "may I be condemned to dream forever?" ... I wish I could watch again beauty of the moon, creating a big heart made of shells on the beach, as a castaway's signal ... hoping to be seen by someone who's flying up there ... and loudly saying .. "Hey .. I'm here ! please help me to escape "
15 " All loss is gain. Since I have become so near-sighted I see no dust nor squalor, and therefore conceive of myself as living in splendor. "
16 " How profoundly grateful I am for the temperament which saves me from the wretched fate of those poor creatures who never find their bearings, but are tossed like dried leaves hither, thither and yon, at the mercy of every event which o'ertakes them; who feel no shame at being vanquished, or at crying out at the common lot of pain and sorrow; who never dimly suspect that the only thing which survives is the resistance we bring to life and not the strain life brings to us. "
17 " A young couple — bride eighteen, man twenty-two — came here for their honeymoon. The day after the wedding, he was found to have scarlet fever, and in two days he was dead. How cruel it is when pain and sorrow come to young things, — they are so helpless; what can they do with it? What a rush of desire to go to them and wrap them about in one's long-accustomedness until the little bewildered soul has woven for itself some sort of casing. "
18 " Alice James Books is a nonprofit cooperative poetry press, founded in 1973 by five women and two men: Patricia Cumming, Marjorie Fletcher, Jean Pedrick, Lee Rudolph, Ron Schreiber, Betsy Sholl and Cornelia Veenendaal. Their objectives were to give women access to publishing and to involve authors in the publishing process.The press remains true to that mission and to publishing a diversity of poets including both beginning and established poets, and a diversity of poetic styles. The press is named for Alice James—the sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher William James—whose fine journal and gift for writing were unrecognized during her lifetime.Since 1994, the press has been affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington. The press educates up to 14 interns per year through individual writing apprenticeships. Alice James Books also serves to train and advise the on-campus, bi-annual literary journal, The Sandy River Review.Alice James Books is one of the original and few presses in the country that is run collectively. Our cooperative selects manuscripts for publication through both regional and national annual competitions. The cooperative offers two book competitions a year: the Kinereth Gensler Award and the Beatrice Hawley Award. The winners of the Kinereth Gensler Award competition become active members of Alice James Books and act as the editorial board after their manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award is exempt from the cooperative work commitment.Alice James Books recently established two new book series: the AJB Translation Series and The Kundiman Poetry Prize. The press partners with Kundiman, a nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion and preservation on Asian American poetry, to present The Kundiman Poetry Prize, a book-length manuscript competition open to all Asian American poets with any number of published books. The inaugural competition took place in 2010. "
